(Lev 18:21 NKJV) 'And you shall not let any of your descendants pass
through the fire to Molech, nor shall you profane the name of your God:
I am the LORD.

(Lev 18:22 NKJV) 'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is
an abomination.

"Did God really ask for such
sacrifices leading to violence to resolve human conflicts." asked Bruce
Chilton in Abraham’s curse: Child Sacrifice”The bible does not shy away
from the innate human
religious tendencies to pay and sacrifice the ultimate to
please the ancient gods. That was the way of the demonic worship of the
god Molech that demands the adherents the sacrifice of the children.This
is closely linked in the bible with the same sex acts as they sacrificed
their babies to the spiritual god and at the same time have sex with the
temple priests so that they can be posessed by the spirit within.
It was an abomination because it was a religious act of having sex with
the gods through the pagan priests. It had nothing to do with same sex
orientation or the "born Eunuchs" mentioned by Jesus.

In the modern 21st
century, we see children sacrificed
as child bombers as if pleasing to the religious gods. It is no different than
3000 years ago because the same spiritual forces are involved demanding
that we give our lives, to demean the sacred value and sanctity attributed by God. They are trying to destroy the image of God in
man.

(2 Chr 3:1 NKJV) Now Solomon began to build the house
of the LORD at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah,
where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David
had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

God asked Abraham for the
sacrifice of Isaac not that we are to follow it as a religious worship
of the ancient gods, but for the very opposite that God actually did not
desire for the sacrifice but that God Himself should bear the
sacrifice in His Son Jesus Christ. The very place that Abraham
wanted to sacrifice Isaac was the place Jesus died for us in Jerusalem. God Himself
became our sacrifice that we need not sacrifice others or ourselves to
please God.

Religion boasts a sacrifice of
ourselves often leading to violence and even child sacrifice to appease
the gods. It is based on what we do, and can do for the gods who in turn
will bless us if they see our sacrifice sufficient. In some modern
religious faith, to be a martyr is a guaranteed path to heaven.

The fact that Abraham followed
through God’s test of faith at Mt Moriah (some historians claiming to be
near Jerusalem) caused him incredibly. Imagined, Isaac being associated
and given away to be sacrificed which was very common for children to be
sacrificed to the deities. It was a shock to Isaac and certainly to
Sarah for he was a child of promise that God will bless Abraham to make
his descendants a great nation.

(Gen 22:19 NIV) Then Abraham returned to his
servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in
Beersheba.

Abraham left Mt Moriah without Isaac. It appears
that Isaac refused to speak to Abraham after the
incident, and so did Sarah with Abraham seemingly losing His family.
It was only when Abraham died, there was a family reunion of
sorts with His sons Isaac and Ishmael.

(Gen 25:8 NIV) Then Abraham breathed his last and
died at a good old age, an old man and full of years; and he was
gathered to his people.

(Gen 25:9 NIV) His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of
Machpelah near Mamre, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite,

Did Abraham mistakenly hear God?
Yet the angels bear testimony that God was testing Abraham. The angels
spoke of Abraham having one son? Surely they did not recognise Ishmael
who was born of Hagar, the maid. God doesn’t honour our carnality but
sees our action on the promises of faith. So it wasn’t a lie that the
Angels say that Isaac was Abraham’s only son.

The Islamic faith asserts that it
was Ishmael and not Isaac that was Abraham’s son, which bears witness to
the fact that Ishmael also suffered and felt rejection in the desert,
and even long for the honour to be the one chosen to be sacrificed to
God. But the occasion to sacrifice ourselves is long past and our
willingness to die a martyr doesn’t make us Abraham’s only legitimate
son. The Arabs attempts to drive the Jews into the sea in the 1967 war
even though there were related because the scar of illegitimacy was too
great.

The declaration by the angels
that Isaac was Abraham’s only son was not exactly correct, but was
deliberately pronounced for our sake, because it speaks of Jesus Christ,
God’s only Son. Just because God is a loving God and is Almighty doesn’t
give Him license to act as He deems fit. For the sake of righteousness,
God’s action must be justified and in Abraham justification was found
because Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son. God’s love for us was
manifested in His willingness to die and suffer for us, but still the
price needs to be paid for our sins so that the law of righteousness was
fulfilled. God so loved us that He made a way possible for
reconciliation not that Hell doesn’t exist, nor would a loving God
simply permit us to suffer in hell.

God often ask and tells us
things of our lives that are plain shocking. To bring out the step and
the position of faith in Abraham, He had to test the sincerity of
Abraham’s faith when for many they would have denied God’s request as
Isaac was the child of promise.

Abraham reached the penultimate
act of faith at Mt Moriah, yet his relationship with God seems
profoundly affected as he doesn’t seem to be as closely attached to God
thereafter.
In the Christian sense, he no longer attends cell group, prayer meeting,
public outreach meeting, weekly seminars, and Sunday services on a very
regular basis.

Abraham needed time to be with
himself, and to live a life he was supposed to without being always in
the spot light of needing to do God’s will. And God didn’t seem to
insist and Abraham had another wife after Sarah died and bored many
children thereafter (when even having one child was nearly impossible
earlier) not because he was not as close to God as he had been but
because he had honoured God at Mt Moriah. God’s love, mercy and grace
flowed into of His life as a result of that one event at Mt Moriah.

(Gen 22:16 NKJV) and said: "By Myself I have sworn,
says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld
your son, your only son;

(Gen 22:17 NKJV) "blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will
multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand
which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of
their enemies.

Abraham’s faith and zeal for God
led him up to Mt Moriah where he sacrificed all, even his only son. It
was not only sacrificing his son, for in Isaac was his life work and
descendants as well. When he chose to sacrifice Isaac, he had to die
first and chose to sacrifice himself. After the incident at Mt. Moriah,
Abraham left the scene, quiet, dead on the inside, and no closer to the
promise that God gave him that through Isaac, a great nation shall come
forth. He hardly talked to God thereafter with the same passion and
fondness he had used to. Yet, the sacrifice at Mt. Moriah changed
history, and forever identified Abraham as the foremost man of faith in
the bible.

Many of us were once fervent for
God, attended multiple cell groups, seminars by famous pastors from all
over the world, and when we pray heaven seems to come down on earth. We
gave generously to the church building fund. Our faith and zeal for God
led us to a point of grace when we begin to realise that we could not hide
being a gay person. We either approach it with the carnal/human approach
by attending ex-gay groups, or like Abraham through the leap of faith
trusting God to accept our same sex orientation even though it
would likely destroy our zeal for God and suffer much rejection. For many the
revelation that we are gay takes all our spiritual strength to
accept and when we
do decide to accept the fact and trust God by faith,
we are all but worn out. We leave the closeness of
relationship with God, dazed and speechless.

Surely we would have asked the
same question as Abraham did, venturing off
into the unknown half a century earlier by faith, and paying so much to sacrifice our lives
to trust God, yet at the end all our are promises empty when we come to
accept that we are gay. It is not that our walk of faith and zeal for
God was in vain, ,for it was a journey
that helped us reach
the point of grace, the point of faith to accept ourselves because the
love and faith of God that has been planted deep in our hearts.

Many of us are walking by the
Spirit and by faith in God just to survive because we are gay. God today
is not asking us to give more, for we have given more than enough.We
have given all when we come to accept
that we are gay.
It was a step
to sacrifice ourselves in trusting in God, His love and acceptance.
We had wanted to deny our gayness and reject ourselves yet the Spirit of
the Lord constrains us.

God
is asking us the question tonight, “what do you want from
Me?”, “How do you want
Me to bless you?". For we have
come to a position of bearing so much pain and suffering, so much lost
in ourselves, our lives taken from us, our
faith sacrificed because we
are gay. It takes an amazing step of
faithto trust when in pain and lost.The incident at Mt Moriah took away so much from Abraham and
Isaac that they too continued to struggle to maintain their former
passion and zeal in God.

“what do you want me
to doin your Life?”
says the Lord of Host. It is no longer what we sacrifice or can do for
God that matters, but what He can do in us when our lives are emptied to
be filled whole again by Him. God renew us, fill us again with your oil
of annointing. Fill us in the areas of our lives where the locust have
eaten away.

Fill my cup Lord,
revive us again, touch us O Lord. We are so thirsty for the grace of
God. Make us whole Lord, help us to accept ourselves, heal us of our
self rejection and shame. Take away shame from our lives.

Fill us up Lord with the Spirit of wholeness and completeness where
we find peace with ourselves. Touch us Lord, take away all our
bitterness, the deep sense of lost that the locust have eaten in our
lives, replace it Lord with your quenching living waters of the Holy
Spirit. Feed us Lord with the bread and wine, the broken body of Christ
and His life giving blood.